fredag 24 maj 2013
torsdag 16 maj 2013
Sexist advertising and the impulsive nature of the eye or the true message hidden in the blind spot
While we are making fun of sexist
advertising, exchanging female for male objects the reaction misses
one crucial point: the very object of the advertising is neither male
nor female object. The true object is the PRODUCT. As a blind spot it
instantiates itself in the unconscious.
Let's revive the whole thing and think
beyond merely reacting upon what we see.
The reactions against sexist
advertising spreads all around the web. How could one not react? The
obvious reaction, to reject with abjection the sexist messages
bombarding us in each and every corner of the eye, the obviousness of
such a reaction is a flip side of the sexist logic. How?
Our negative reactions to sexist
message are bound to same mechanisms of excitement as the sexist
impulse aroused by porn. There is nothing truly reactionary save for
the impulsive reaction as we “react”. Why?
Each advertising strategy is
essentially sexist as it speaks to our immediate impulses.
Such is the power of advertising. It
gives you what you do not want until you want it. The resistance is
futile. You will be assimilated.
The anti-sexist campaign manage to
exchange the object but it still exposes the PRODUCT and in a truly
dialectical way: now we have both sexist advertisement and its
opposite at once. You are free to choose how to react. In either way
you will be excited, engaged.
The anti-sexist campaign is caught in
the same sexist logic although it actually tries to shake up the
conformist ignorance providing enlightening what if examples. It
ultimately fails to deliver a CRITIQUE as the entire logic of its
gesture does not escape the sexist message.
Is it possible to react beyond the
opposition which on both sides manage only to shift focus but not hit
the core of the problem? In this case the problem is sexism. Not
male, female but the sexism innate in the advertising strategies,
inspiring a reaction for or against and yet exposing the PRODUCT.
And this is the advertising at its most
effective. Its message will always be delivered. True dialectics,
indeed. While politically correct “reactions” are expressed the
product is the only thing that remains unchanged. The LOGO is still
there. Attached to a breast or a beard, the point is not how we are
advertised to BUY, what is the message. The tragedy, indeed a
catastrophe of our attachment to advertising is that it works the
second you cast the eye upon it.
The true effect of advertising lies not
in your positive or negative reaction to its message but in the blind
spot which injects the desire for the product.
A truly radical opposition to sexism
will fail to affect the root of the problem while its strategy is
(dis)organised as impulsive reaction caught in advertising game.
A truly radical opposition to sexism
starts with careful examination of the nature of our reactions
instead, with awareness of the same logic that underlies the object
and the abject ALIKE. And herein lies the core of sexist success. It
is reversible, it welcomes us all.
A suggested soundtrack to the reading: Diamanda Galas, Wild Women With the Steak Knives:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUFw2fiksUc
tisdag 7 maj 2013
Muse and the Real
The soul of the artist is moved by the beauty inspiring an image upon his vision. Thereof the work of art. Real beauty is forever external. Art acknowledges the intangibility of the real.
fredag 3 maj 2013
Christine Papin and the Mystery of Life
At the very end of his article on the case of Papin sisters (‘Motifs du
crime paranoïaque’, Le Minotaure, December
1933, no. 3-4) Lacan highlights Christine Papin’s testimony in the court where
she apparently said that in the deep wounds of her victims she perceived the
“mystery of life”. It seems to me that Lacan leaves it to the reader to decide if Christine Papin actually became mad in the aftermath of the horrible act she
committed together with her sister. In the article Lacan emphasizes the emotional motives of the sisters' crime, which according to Lacan is based on the problem inherent to the relation between the two sisters and to their victims to be. In another words, without going into detail
of Lacan’s suggestions here, the crime of Papin sisters was, as I read Lacan,
not caused by madness. It was a natural, however fatal reaction due to the
circumstances of their frustrated situation which made it impossible for the two
timid maids to become lovers.
Christine’s “mystical experience” is a symptom of her loss. In her madness she recognizes the “mystery of life” in the bleeding wounds of her victim’s massacred bodies, her reaction suggests that she, like any other who was terrified by the Papin’s crime, was unable to understand what really happened, why she and her sister committed such a horrible act. She was separated from her sister during the trial, which caused her great suffering. Christine’s perception of the “mystery of life” suggests that madness perhaps offered her shelter for a moment, substituting morbid massacre with mystical vision, blinding her from the unbearable burden of guilt. Christine, confined in the asylum, desperately longing for her sister Lea whom she was not allowed to see… it was perhaps the guilt that after all led Christine to death by apathy and starvation…
Christine’s “mystical experience” is a symptom of her loss. In her madness she recognizes the “mystery of life” in the bleeding wounds of her victim’s massacred bodies, her reaction suggests that she, like any other who was terrified by the Papin’s crime, was unable to understand what really happened, why she and her sister committed such a horrible act. She was separated from her sister during the trial, which caused her great suffering. Christine’s perception of the “mystery of life” suggests that madness perhaps offered her shelter for a moment, substituting morbid massacre with mystical vision, blinding her from the unbearable burden of guilt. Christine, confined in the asylum, desperately longing for her sister Lea whom she was not allowed to see… it was perhaps the guilt that after all led Christine to death by apathy and starvation…
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